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Ex-Governor, in Plea, to Aid in Whitewater Case

Marking an important breakthrough for Whitewater prosecutors, former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker of Arkansas pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge today and agreed to cooperate with investigators who have spent the last four years examining the business dealings of the President and Hillary Rodham Clinton before they arrived in Washington.

Mr. Tucker, who entered the plea in Federal District Court in Little Rock, Ark., has been considered a potentially significant witness in the inquiry because of his involvement in a failed land deal involving a corrupt savings association.

Mrs. Clinton did legal work on the land deal, known as Castle Grande, which was built on a series of sham transactions and created some of the biggest losses for Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. Madison Guaranty, which was operated by James B. and Susan McDougal, the Clintons' former business partners in the Whitewater land venture, was ultimately bailed out by the Federal Government at a cost of more than $60 million to taxpayers.

Mrs. Clinton has testified that she did nothing improper in her handling of the Castle Grande deal, that her work on it was minimal and that she could not recall many details. But a report prepared by Republicans on the Senate Whitewater committee challenged her account and suggested that she had been more involved than she had acknowledged.

Mr. Tucker also has extensive knowledge of the Clintons' dealings with the McDougals. During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Susan Thomases, a lawyer for the Clintons, directed a reporter to Mr. Tucker to understand what concerns the Clintons had about Mr. McDougal. Mr. McDougal and Mr. Tucker had been partners in several ventures, and in 1996, Mr. Tucker resigned after being convicted of two felony counts in the fraud trial of the McDougals.

White House officials said today that they could not comment on Mr. Tucker's plea agreement. But the agreement, under which prosecutors are to recommend that Mr. Tucker not been sentenced to prison, was seen today as welcome news by Kenneth W. Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel, who has come under withering criticism for pursuing an ever-expanding inquiry that now encompasses the Monica S. Lewinsky investigation.

One of Mr. Starr's deputies, W. Hickman Ewing Jr., also hailed the agreement.

''We do believe this will be a significant advancement toward the goals of this investigation,'' Mr. Ewing said in front of the Federal Courthouse in Little Rock. He would not say what information he expected to get.

Mr. Tucker, 54, refused to say whether he had any information of value to the investigators.

''I guess everyone would have their own interpretation of that,'' the former Governor said after his court appearance. ''What may be important to some people may not be important to others. My family and I have been through a nightmare for the last four years, and it is time that that come to an end.''

Throughout much of his career, Mr. Tucker had been a rival of Mr. Clinton's. After Mr. Clinton was elected in 1992, Mr. Tucker, the Lieutenant Governor, succeeded him as Governor. After his 1996 conviction, Mr. Tucker was spared a jail sentence because of serious health problems. On Thursday he completed 18 months of home detention on those charges.

But he was indicted on separate charges of making false statements to obtain a federally backed loan, defrauding the Internal Revenue Service and trying to hide the profits from a multimillion-dollar cable television deal. They were resolved today when he pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge of engaging in a sham bankruptcy to avoid paying Federal income tax and agreed to talk to investigators about what he knows on a wide array of subjects.

Mr. Tucker agreed to make restitution and pay any back taxes and to serve probation, as determined by a judge at a later proceeding. The count to which he pleaded guilty carries a maximum sentence of five years. Prosecutors also agreed not to retry Mr. Tucker on the 1996 convictions should they be overturned.